Making assumptions about someone based on their name is ridiculous. A few attention-seeking celebrities aside, most of us were given our names, rather than choosing them, so why should they be any indicator of the kind of person we are? And yet a new European study claims that people with unfashionable first names suffer from prejudice, with life-long implications for their self-esteem and well-being.

Jochen Gebauer and his team used data collected from the German eDarling dating website. With the consent of hundreds of registered users, they looked to see how people with unfashionable first names were treated.

In the first study, the researchers identified hundreds of users of the dating site who had names that had been rated positively (e.g. Alexander) or negatively (e.g. Kevin) by 500 teachers as part of a different project. The eDarling website sends emails to users suggesting contacts in the form of a person’s name, age and region. Users specify their preferences for age and region, so a suggested contact’s name is the only information daters can really use in choosing whether to purse a contact. The main finding here was that people with unfashionable names like Kevin or Chantal were dramatically more likely to be rejected by other users (i.e. other users tended to choose not to contact them). A user with the most popular name (Alexander) received on average double the number of contacts as someone with the least popular name (Kevin).

An obvious criticism is that this online dating is an artificial situation – perhaps in real life we use other information to overcome any potential prejudice we might have against unpopular names. However, the researchers also found that people with unpopular names were more likely to smoke, had lower self-esteem and were less educated. What’s more, the link between the popularity of their name and these life outcomes was mediated by the amount of rejection they suffered on the dating site – as if rejection on the site were a proxy for the amount of social neglect they’d suffered in life.

A further two studies replicated these results with a wider range of names and different methods of measuring name popularity. For example, the final study simply used name frequency as a measure of popularity. This again showed that people with less popular names experienced more rejection in online dating and had lower self-esteem and other adverse outcomes. This was the case even if their name had once been popular. So it’s not the case that the negative correlates of having an unpopular name can be traced back somehow to having had the kind of parents who choose unpopular names.

These new results echo earlier research in the USA that found racial prejudice could affect the way people are treated based on their name. Identical CVs were dramatically more likely to attract job interviews if they were attributed to a person with a White-sounding name than if they were attributed to a person with an African-American sounding name. However race prejudice wasn’t the cause of the harmful correlates of unpopular names in the current study – nearly all the names were White-sounding. Aside from racial prejudice, what causes names to acquire negative connotations is for another research paper. No doubt the names of celebrities, fictional characters and other high profile people play a role.

“Seemingly benign factors, such as first names, add up in real life, gaining considerable collective power in predicting feeling, thought, and behaviour,” the researchers said. “The results also highlight the self-presentational value of first names and underscore the importance for parents to choose positively valenced first names for their children.”
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12 thoughts on “The life-long curse of an unpopular name”

May be this is more down to the way your parents are rather than anything to do with you! After all, they named you! For example the kind of parents that think Kevin is a nice name are going to be a certain type of person different to a person who hates the name Kevin. They will then affect and mold their offspring because of the way they are – nothing to do with the name. Just a thought!

Since when has Kevin become unpopular?. I suppose because the name means; “Kind & Gentle” it would be anathema to the German Mind.It is research like this that gives Psychology a bad name. This is the type of 'CRAP' I would expect to read in popular psychology publications.

anonymous 3 is right. there's nothing wrong with the name kevin per se. the problem with it is only that in german-speaking countries (I'm from Austria, and it's the same here) it has lower-class-connotations. so this is also why people with such names were probably more likely to be rejected on those online dating sites, and people with names indicating higher social status, like Alexander, were more successful. also the argumentation in paragraph 4 that there was a link between unpopular names and a higher likeliness to smoke, etc. is just flawed. it doesn't have to do with the name, it has to do with the social background.i know that in paragraph 5, they state that there have been two further studies with a wider range of names, but i think you'd have to have more information about these, for a profound judgement about the connection between so-called unpopular names and their impact on a person's life.

I can only confirm that the problem with the names Kevin and Chantal here in Germany is that they are (or until very recently were) extremely popular with parents from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Which makes it an unpopular name for the middle-class. So the correlation between being called Kevin and having less education, more smoking etc. can be explained with a higher probability of having parents with low socioeconomic status.